


Breakfast in Bed

by gray_autumn_sky



Series: Lazy Saturday [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 18:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8411287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gray_autumn_sky/pseuds/gray_autumn_sky
Summary: With Henry's help, Mal braves a myriad of kitchen appliances to surprise Regina with breakfast in bed.





	

Maleficent crosses her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes, letting them roam judgmentally over the items lined up on the counter. There’s a bowl of eggs and some uncooked bacon on a plate, bread in need of toasting and coffee beans that somehow must be turned into liquid. She huffs a little, thinking to herself that it shouldn’t be this difficult—after all, _modern_ appliances are supposed to _simplify_ things and make things _easier_ , or at least that’s what Regina told her every time she even tries to complain.

In the Enchanted Forest breakfast had never been much of a concern—of course, dietary habits were different there, and a morning meal rarely consisted of fluffy eggs and steaming cups of coffee. In the Enchanted Forest, food was just viewed differently—sustenance for the day rather than something that should bring enjoyment. And while she didn’t quite understand the social and emotional aspects of a home-cooked meal, Regina certainly did—and she had to remind herself of that every time she felt the burning desire to torch the entire kitchen.

Taking a long and deep breath, Mal turns to the cabinet and pulls it open as she chews on her bottom lip and considers her options—and she really wonders if all of this is necessary. There are sauté pans and sauce pans and frying pans, and each are essentially the same to her—a metal surface that would heat up all the same beneath a flame. She reaches blindly into the cabinet, choosing a flat pan with a handle and little grooves along the interior surface, and she smiles triumphantly—not because she knows she’s made the correct choice, but she can finally move forward with this process.

But then she turns to the stove and her hand stops just short of one of the knobs, and she can’t quite remember what all of the buttons do. Regina’s explained it a hundred times—turn this one to do this, press that one to do that—and she made it seem so easy. But it wasn’t, and she asked again and again—and to no avail, she still didn’t really understand the differences between _bake_ and _confection_ or what a _medium-high_ flame looked like or why anyone would choose a _low_ flame and take double the time to cook something as you could with a high one.

With a little huff, she sets down the pan and twists a knob—immediately frowning when a back burner ignites instead of a the front one—and instead of trying to figure out which knob would light a flame beneath the burner she wants it under, she simply moves the pan. A little smile creeps onto her lips at the little victory over the stove and she turns back to the counter and looks between the eggs and the bacon and the bread—and an overwhelming sensation washes over her because she has to start somewhere, with one of these things, and for the life of her, she doesn’t know which. For a second, she considers—theoretically, bacon should take longer, but eggs should require more attention. Chewing at her lip she shakes her head and it occurs to her that Regina would probably cook them at the same time in one of those other fancily named pans, but the only thing that sounds less appealing the cold eggs is the thought of having a second pan and a second burner to pay attention to. So, she reaches for the bacon and dumps it onto the pan, not really caring what she _should_ do.

It’s a jumbled heap in the pan, and something about that doesn’t seem right. Whenever Regina makes it, she lays it out in rows, gently poking and prodding until it’s fully cooked and perfectly crisp—but past experience tells her a _metal_ fork on a hot pan will be a poor choice and despite her days as a dragon and her penchant for fire, she isn’t interested in burning anything, especially not the sensitive skin on the pads of her fingers. So she reaches for a wooden spatula, awkward shoving it beneath the bacon, twisting it around until the bacon is somewhat separated and she deems it good enough.

And then she stands there, blinking absently at the bacon, watching it sizzle and pop as she wonders just how long this is going to take. It occurs to her, she could look it up; after all, Regina has at least fifty recipe books on a shelf in the cabinet above the stove. But that has proven to be a futile exercise in the past. She’s generally not looking for the sorts of things listed in those books—and as Regina gently and lovingly reminded her, the _basics_ are generally not included, anyway. Blinking, she looks back to the stairs and she wonders if Henry’s awake yet—he always knows these sorts of things and when he doesn’t, he taps on that little device that’s perpetually connected to his hand and supplies whatever information she needs. But it’s early and the chances of a teenager being awake are slim. So she sighs and just continues to stare.

The pan bubbles and pops and when the bacon appears to be done, she scoops it out with the same flat wooden spatula, awkwardly shifting it from the pan to a plate—and she knows there’s something else she’s supposed to do to it, but for the life of her, she can’t remember what that thing is. With a little sigh, she shrugs her shoulders, remembering that Henry once told her that you just can’t go wrong with any form of bacon, and once more she deems it good enough.

And then she turns back to the counter—and once more is at a total loss.

Coffee takes awhile, but the eggs will require tending—and for an all too brief moment, she wonders if she could simply serve bacon for breakfast—because she truly doesn’t know what to do next. Tentatively, she reaches for the bowl of eggs, chewing at her lip as she turns back to the stove, watching as the bacon grease sizzles. Groaning, she reaches for a dish rag, pulling the pan toward her as she contemplates how one would even go about discarding hot grease.

“You need that,” Henry’s voice informs her.

She turns, blinking back at him as relief washes over her. “Oh…”

“But you don’t want that pan. The eggs will stick in the grooves, no matter what kind you decide to make.”

“Kind?”

At that Henry laughs, and for a split second, he reminds her of Regina—and somehow, that relaxes her a little.

“Here,” Henry says, pushing into the kitchen. “Give me that and you go get a frying pan.” Mal nods and blinks because while she knows the name of the pan—Regina’s certainly said it enough while happily gliding through the kitchen while preparing all sorts of meals—she’s not entirely sure which one that is, and once more, Henry chuckles softly. “Or, you hold that and I’ll get it.” Mal nods and watches as Henry stoops in front of the cabinet, quickly retrieving the pan and setting it down onto the lit burner, moving with such ease that he’s almost graceful—and a smile tugs onto her lips, as she thinks of how many times Henry’s done this before over the years with Regina hovering proudly over him as he learned. “Okay, so pour the grease into the…”

“Are you sure? That just doesn’t sound… sanitary.”

“I’m sure,” Henry says with a nod, watching as she drains the bacon grease into the new pan. “Now, what type of eggs did you want to make?”

Mal only blinks as she watches Henry lift one of the eggs from the bowl. “Oh. Well. Cooked ones.”

Shaking his head, a grin twists onto his lips. “Is it safe to assume these are for mom?”

“Well, I certainly wouldn’t go through this charade for myself.” Mal sighs. “She likes the… runny ones.”

“Sunny-side up,” Henry says with a nod. “And she does. So, once the pan heats up, we’ll do the eggs. But now we’re going to do the coffee.”

“I hate the coffee,” Mal mumbles beneath her breath, as she follows him to the counter, watching as he stoops to another cabinet and withdraws some sort of appliance she hasn’t learned the name of. “How do you know how to do this? Children don’t drink coffee?”

“True,” Henry agrees with a nod. “But my mom’s obsessed with good coffee. She ordered these beans from _Kenya_.”

“Is that… far away?”

“Yeah,” Henry says with a slight chuckle behind his words. “A little bit.” She makes a mental note to look up Kenya in the atlas on the shelf in Regina’s study, much more interested in the wider world around them in this realm than the damn kitchen appliances in this room, and she wonders what it’s like there and why Regina would order her coffee beans from there—and then suddenly she jumps at the loud, awful noise coming from the appliance in Henry’s hands and her eyes widen as the beans slowly but surely turn to a coarse, almost-but-not-quite powdery substance. “So, you put this in the filter and…”

“What’s a filter?”

“Right…” Henry reaches for package in the cabinet, opening it up and retrieving a paper dish of sorts as he pulls out a little drawer at the top of the stainless steel coffee maker she does her best to avoid. “So, she likes four scoops,” Henry tells her as he hands her a little blue spoon, then twirls back to the stove to check on the bacon grease. “And once you do that, use a cup to pour water in the back.

“Well, that sounds easy enough,” Mal murmurs, not at all convinced that it will be anything even close to easy. She inhales deeply, admittedly the bacon and the coffee grounds smell incredible and she hopes that Regina doesn’t awaken from the delightful smells and the obnoxious sounds; and she grins triumphantly as she fills the back canister with water and closes the lid without spilling anything on herself. And then she blinks. “Henry, it’s… not doing anything.”

“That’s because it’s not on.”

“Oh…”

“You don’t know how to turn it on, do you?”

“It’s… _one_ of those buttons…” She scowls. “Why are there _so many_ buttons?”

Henry laughs. “Press the red one.”

“Oh…” Mal murmurs as she presses her finger to the button, pressing it in and quickly withdrawing as the coffeemaker comes to life, hissing and steaming and spitting—and she suppresses the urge to hiss back because as wonderful as it smells and as incredible it as she knows it’ll taste, she _hates_ this damn machine more than anything.

“So for the eggs,” Henry begins as she tears her gaze from the coffee maker. “You just…crack them over the edge of the frying pan and wait for the clear part to turn white.”

“Okay,” Mal says with a nod, looking back and narrowing her eyes at the coffeemaker. “I should be able to do that.” Henry nods and hands her an egg. Inhaling a short breath, she taps the egg on the edge, just as he instructed and she frowns when nothing happens. “Isn’t it supposed to… break?”

“Yeah,” Henry tells her. “Do it a little harder.”

“Alright,” she says again before slapping the egg onto the edge of the pan, feeling a momentary victory as the egg cracks open and slides into the pan—and then she notices the little pieces of brown shell in the clear part of the egg. “Oh, bloody hell...”   

“You can just pick those out,” Henry tells her, handing her a fork. “I used to do that all of the time.”

“What? When you were nine?”

“Well, more like six, but…” Mal sighs in frustration as she picks out the egg shells. “I’ll do the other ones. Can you get one of the spatulas?” She nods and opens the drawer beside the stove, and when her fingers touch to a rubber tipped spatula, Henry clears his throat. “Oh, those ones are for mixing. We need a metal one.”

“Of course…” she mumbles in annoyance.

“How about I finish these,” Henry says as he sprinkles some sort of flaky spice over the eggs. “You do the toast.”

Mal sighs and nods, part of her wishing she could shift herself into dragon form and breathe fire onto the bread, toast it, and be done with it; but she knows that’s not an option…at least not in the house, and the last time she did it outside, she frightened the little girl next door…and promised the girl—and Regina—that she wouldn’t do it again. And while she was a lot of things, she wasn’t one to go back on her word, no matter how frustrated she as with the damn toaster.

Plucking a few slices of bread from the bag, she slowly and carefully places them in the slots, and holds her breath as she pushes down on the lever. She watches as the toaster’s insides begin to glow red and her heart beat begins to quicken, knowing that at some point very soon, the toasted bread is going to pop up and… “Son of a…”

“You know,” Henry begins, as he slides the spatula beneath the eggs and drops them down onto two places, and her heart beats wildly in her chest as the toast sits at the top of the toaster. “If you didn’t hover over it, it wouldn’t scare you.”

“That’s… a valid point,” Mal murmurs in reply.

“Okay, the eggs are done,” Henry tells her as he sets two plates down on the counter. “And I am going back to bed.”

“But… you’re already awake.”

“I’m a teenager. It’s unnatural for me to be awake on a Saturday before ten.”

“Oh…”

“Hey, can we go on a hike this afternoon?” A smile tugs onto her lips as she looks up at him. “Maybe you can show me how I know which berries I can eat.” She nods at the thought, sincerely looking forward to that. “We can pick some and maybe tonight we can…”

“Do _not_ say _bake_ a pie.”

“Oh, well, maybe mom could…”

“That’s better,” she tells him with a slight laugh. “How about we go around… eleven? Will you be up by then?”

“Perfect,” he tells her with a nod as he heads to the stairs, and a moment later she hears his door close.

It takes her a few minutes to arrange the bacon and the toast on the plates with the eggs. She pours two mugs of coffee, then reaches into the refrigerator for some other things—jam and butter, cream for the coffee and some cut up fruit—and when all is said and done, she gives the coffee maker one last glare, before heading up the stairs to the bedroom.

She sets the tray down on the nightstand, gently sitting down at Regina’s side. She runs her long fingers up and down the length of Regina’s arm a couple of times before Regina begins to wake up and she waits for her to twist from her side onto her back—and she can’t help but grin as Regina presses herself back into the pillow, trying to hang onto sleep for just a little bit longer. Mal feels a pang of guilt at the thought of waking her, knowing how difficult it is for Regina to sleep—and despite the hot breakfast sitting on the nightstand, she wonders if Henry didn’t have the right idea, and she thinks about how good it would feel to slip back into bed beside Regina and cuddle up beside her and fall back to sleep.

But then Regina starts to stir and she leans in, brushing her lips quickly over her jaw, before letting them sweep to the crook of her neck. Regina murmurs something groggily and she can almost feel her smiling as her hand reaches up and her fingers slip blindly into Mal’s hair, pulling her into a kiss. The kiss is soft and fleeting, gentle and sweet, completely unrushed and with no expectation behind it, and when Regina pulls back, she smiles warmly and says good morning—and when she notices the breakfast tray sitting on the nightstand and looks back to Mal with wide and sleepy eyes.

“ _You_ … made breakfast.”

“Eggs, bacon, and toast,” Mal replies, a proud grin stretching across her lips—not because she actually made breakfast, but because Regina’s smile is exactly what she’d been hoping for. “Well, I can’t take all of the credit. Henry helped. A lot.”

“I… _can’t believe_ you made me breakfast,” Regina says, pulling herself up so she can better see the tray—and then she reaches for her, pulling her into kiss that quite literally takes her breath away—and her battles with the toaster and the coffee maker are completely worthwhile.


End file.
